#6 - Tough Talk: Drop the 20% That's Draining You

Some clients aren’t just demanding—they’re draining. In this episode of Over The Bull, Ken Carroll breaks down how just 20% of your clients can cause 80% of your stress, and why holding onto them (especially during slow seasons) might be costing you more than you think.

We’ll cover:
•Red flags that signal a client needs to go
•Why “being nice” can ruin your business
•The real ROI of letting go
•How to free up space for better clients and better work

If you’ve ever kept a client just because it felt like the safe move, this one’s for you.

Over The Bull is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.

Transcript

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You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut through marketing noise. Here's your host, Ken Carroll.

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Why you need to let go of 20% of your customers or clients on this episode of Over the Bull. Boy, is this a tough one or what? But, you know, I know you know the people that you serve in your business. You know those ones that I'm talking about, the ones that you keep around that are distractions, that frustrate your fellow teammates, your employees, your contractors, whatever you may have. The ones that just seem like you can never quite satisfy. Now, you probably hold on to them for various reasons, and we're going to explore that today. And so let's dive right in. Now, in episode number one, we shared with you a story about someone we had to let go. Now, in our case, we know most of the time when people come on board with us, there's going to be an upramp phase. Now, the 80-20 rule can sound a little bit aggressive because what it basically says is that 20% of your customers are 80% of your headache and 80% of your customers are 20% of your headache. But it's not really headaches. It's kind of the need factor or the different factors that go into the things that they need in order to use your services. And so if they didn't have questions or needs, then they wouldn't need you. And so you should expect an amount of overhead to help people out as they're exploring what you're offering them. Now, this is normal, and by no means should you look at every situation in the same lens. And of course, people are not robots, meaning that once you get someone over the hump, it doesn't mean that they're forever over the hump. It could be that as you introduce ideas or as things come along, or maybe you drop the ball or they drop the ball or whoever it would be, sometimes those will lead to little ripples. But those ripples should level out fairly quickly with a good client. but they could get extended with a negative client. So let's take a look at a few of the issues that we can identify that would cause a client to be not a good client. Now, of course, client, customer, however you refer to them. So the first are missed boundaries. You know, if you remember in the first episode of Over the Bull, we had a client that would be overly demanding. You know, he was very susceptible to a sales pitch. And because he was so jaded, he had expectations of us jumping on the call whenever he was concerned or even calling us after hours. You know, these kind of boundaries are not acceptable. Now, sometimes it could even be the language. If someone's super aggressive with you. Now, sometimes it could be it's your fault, right? And sometimes it's not due to your fault. But you have to understand that a lot of times people, as they're adults, they actually adopt this behavior from when they were kids. So if a kid could use anger, frustration, different tactics to get their way, then that translates to adulthood sometimes. And they think that if they use those same tactics, then they'll get the same results. So they had a bad practice when they were young. Their parents may have reinforced it. And then they think this is how they can get through life. So, you know, negative things like pouting, complaining, yelling, screaming, you know, those kind of things. And then sometimes those are natural emotions. So, you know, you have to really analyze it and you can't just put everybody in one bucket and every situation in one bucket. Now, the next thing is breadcrumb communications. Breadcrumb communications are where you see like a partial question and a partial whatever, and then they come back and then there's another question followed by another question. And pretty soon you've got 25 to 30 emails that could have been really consolidated into one communication. Now, the consolidation means that you can react better and do a better job while the breadcrumb kind of thing will draw communications out. But more importantly, it could make you look incompetent, for lack of a better word, because in email number 17 versus email number 34, there was a communication which wasn't adequately documented in your system or your people could not go through and actually evaluate, you know, an hour and a half worth of communications that are buried. And so breadcrumb communications can be extremely detrimental to your business because in all actuality, your customer did tell you to do something. But in all actuality, it was way too much for you to have to go back in and document and reread every time that you communicate with that particular customer. The next one is constant pushback or vague scope pushback. So what this means is if you look at constant pushback, it's where you're offering advice and then they're always debating with you. You know, they're always either looking at other people, they're going down other routes, and then they're bringing that into the conversation. And then oftentimes they would just make like this thing where you're constantly having to justify where you're at.

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Right.

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Now, in episode one, you'll see also that was a classic example that we had to go through, and that pushback, it did stop at the very, very end a little bit, but again, it was always there. Now, vague scope creep. Boy, that's a big one, wasn't it? It's in my notes, and that's why I had to kind of read it and stop for a second. So vague scope creep. What that means is that you have a project or a service or a product that you're going to offer, and then gradually the customer starts pushing those boundaries out a little bit. And so then they want to ask you if you'll do a little bit more. Now, As the owner of a business or as a business, anytime you offer something over and beyond, that's a type of creep. Now, sometimes people will simply appreciate it and go on. And other times they see it as an opportunity to use that as a tool to get more stuff from you, essentially for nothing in the future. And so a lot of times it works with really good customers, with negative customers or customers that don't have the best attributes. It actually could hurt your business because then they're going to think, well, you gave that to me once. Why would you not give that to me again? And then they may even try to push it another step out. And so a lot of times people feel they're deserving of these things and not really take it as in context of the overhead of a business. in that you're really doing something to kind of help them out initially. So let's talk about some red flags. I'm going to scroll through my notes here. And here's a checklist for you. Are they going to question every line of your quote? So early on in the game, if you send a quote and you find that they're asking questions and really kind of drawing out that process that are not meaningful, you know, asking questions again, you know it and I know it, that's not a bad thing. But when someone starts to overanalyze or over assess and then start questioning things right out the gate, this really could be a negative sign that this person is going to be very demanding. They're going to be very time consuming. And of course, that's not a good thing for business. And here's one that we've run into. I can think of several years ago where we had a client and basically this guy would disappear. And then all of a sudden he would reappear in like neat things ASAP. Now, this guy was also very disorganized too. And so what happened was he would even forget the communication or not really pay attention to it because he was a busy guy. But I can remember around Thanksgiving, three or four years ago, a guy went off the radar. Now, if someone goes off the radar with us, we typically have a process where we'll reach out and say, hey, no rush. Whenever you're ready to move forward, let us know. But we can't move forward until you provide us with this. Now, we do that with all of our clients. Now, in this particular case, before Thanksgiving, this guy reached out and he said, hey, I need X, Y, Z, A, B, C, D, E, F, and I need it right after Thanksgiving. And so what happened was this guy was working for someone else and this was another thing he was doing. And you could tell that he was ramping up for the holidays, wanting to take time off. And so basically he dumped everything on us right before Thanksgiving holiday. which meant we had to rush things over Thanksgiving. Now for us, sometimes that happens. It just does. And usually it's very meaningful when the customer needs it, and we understand that. However, after Thanksgiving, this particular customer didn't reach back out to us. And he didn't say thank you or he needed some additional revisions or let us know anything. He disappeared again. Then Christmas, we started getting near Christmas and you guessed it. He was getting ready to go to Christmas holiday. He evaluated it. He dropped the ball on his end for about a month and then he needed us to rush something through Christmas. Now, of course, this is tough, but you know, Christmas holiday for us is more than just Christmas Eve and Christmas. And so we were able to work it in over the holidays and you guessed it. He disappeared yet again. And so the customers that do the disappear and reappear and rush you, oftentimes those timetables don't fit within your business because you have to schedule things out too. And so the Houdini style client, you probably need to look at them very closely. Now, what about the never happy customer? Have you ever had them where it don't seem like anything you do can appease the customer? They always have you on pins and needles worrying about, you know, what you should do and how you can make them happy. And there's always this little thing that they need done, you know. And if that's the case, then that's another symptom that you're probably never going to make this customer happy. Now, here's a big one. Do they consume more time than your good customers? When I say good, I mean your best customers. And typically, that timeline's 3 to 5x. So... You know what your business is like. Like, I know what my business is like. I know when we take on a new client, I know that the first months are going to be intensive because they've been told so many lies and so many misconceptions. And they have so many false ideas about what the Internet can really do that oftentimes they're they really don't know what to expect, and so there's a lot of clarity that happens in those first few months. So we know a new client's going to be front-loaded with information. Now, because we do that, we also know when a client oversteps those bounds. Now, when they overstep those bounds is when you start to see like an inundation or a never-ending up-ramping process, or the customer just seems damaged, like they just don't feel like, they feel like they're always being taken advantage of, or they're feeling like they need to question things, or somehow you're trying to get away with something. And if you see the 3x factor, if you see that they're more time-consuming, then that's a sign that maybe that's not the best person you're you need to be working with. So why do we do it? You know, I can tell you like right now, you know, as I'm doing this, it's like I'm not perfect. You know, I run a business and I do have this hope that even with some of the The worst clients that we have as far as overhead and everything, there's this idea that somehow we're going to turn the corner with them. And there's a lot of cases where I just feel like if I just do it, I can do it, right? But why else would we hold on to bad clients that really are more consuming and use more resources than they provide the company? Because like it or not, in business, our goal is to make money. Our goal is not to be a nonprofit where we go in and provide services that are never ending and we end up losing money. So when you think of it, you know, it's not just the time it takes to do the work. So let me bring this out a little bit. You're overhead of your business. It's the person that answers the phone. It's the time to document the notes. It's the subsequent phone calls that happen. It's the time to do the actual work. It's the calls that come in after you've done the work. If there are complaints and things like that, it's the subsequent follow-ups after that. It's if you had to replace certain parts that you know were good to begin with, but you're just trying to make the person happy or going back out on location for various reasons. That's your overhead. It's not just a service call itself. One common mistake businesses make is they think just because they have a W-2 employee that they're paying on an hourly basis that somehow that extra time that goes into all those processes really is not overhead. However, it is overhead, and it negatively impacts your ability to properly support your good customers. And so when you think of overhead, when you think of these things, don't just go as far as the service, but think of all the mechanics, all the support, all the devices, all the software, everything that goes into the entire from beginning to end with a particular client. Factor all those in and that gives you an idea of what a customer can cost you. Now, the number one factor of why people hold on to the 20% is because they are afraid. Now, we hate to say that as owners of a business, but you know what? I've taken those phone calls from clients who are fearful. And the idea is you're fearful that if you let go of that 20%, then you're going to lose that revenue and not be able to replace it. However, There's something brilliant that happens when you get over that fear factor. And that is all of a sudden, your time loosens up. Your production processes loosen up. The frustration of your staff, it loosens up. And now they've got more time to do more things that are good for the 80%. Plus, they have an increased bandwidth to take on more customers. So the idea of losing revenue, it's tough. I'm not going to lie to you. I think about it. I know you think about it. And sometimes what's really tough is you have a customer that pays really good, but they're also part of that 20%. And so making those decisions is difficult because, you know, we have to keep the lights on as owners of businesses. Now, the next one I guarantee you will get you. And that is feeling like you have to do work you really shouldn't accept during down seasons. You know what I'm talking about. Slow times of the year. There was a guy years ago. He was a manufacturer. And he was all about, you know, standard products. Nothing custom. Custom would always be one of those things where I can see him in peak times. He would say he would never accept it. But then when things slowed down, you started seeing him accept projects because he was nervous because the spec stuff wasn't selling and the custom would sell in off-season. So what you would see him do is you would see him approach it. You know, this idea of, you know, I can't afford to say no right now. I need something, anything to keep the money coming in. It's not ideal, but I'll deal with it because we're slow. You see, these kind of ideas are also tough because there are situations where we need to do that. But in order to do that, we're going to have to set up some boundaries if we feel like we are forced to do that. However. When you bring on those people, you have to understand more than likely you're bringing on people that have expectations that are beyond the model of your business. And during peak season, they will become more stressful to you. And in a world where everybody can say anything about anyone, this could be problematic for you and your business. Now, the good guys, you know, the guys who have been around a while that understand business, they know they're going to have a slow time, and oftentimes they save their money for those slow times so they don't have to take on those projects. Now, that's ideal. Younger businesses, sometimes you have to scratch your way to a point of stability, so your decision-making process may be different. Now, I can think of one guy, man, this was probably, I don't know, 10 years ago, and his client said, He made a lot of money. I mean, a lot of money. And he would often abuse his resources by traveling places and just really living on a much higher level than he should. Well, his season would diminish at a certain point during the year. He was only really could operate probably legitimately seven or eight months out of the year. He was in tourism. So when things got slow, what would happen? He'd make some really bad decisions because he didn't save his money. He wasn't in preparation. You know, tax preparers, people like that, they also have very in-season and out-of-season. And there's a mode that they go into where usually they have to make all their money in that little segment and then spread it out for the rest of the year, reduce their overhead, and then ramp back up and those kind of cycles as well. So as you can see, it's not the same for every single business. But every single business does have the same type of issues. Oh, and here's the next one. Guilt. You know, those long-standing clients, the ones you've had forever, and you have this guilt factor of wanting to support them. This sense of more, it could be considered more altruism than guilt or loyalty. But a lot of times we get kind of sucked into this idea because we feel like that we should extend them something more than we should. Now there's other times where we should do that, right? And so to create those boundaries of those long standing customers, and when it comes to a point where you're no longer having a healthy business and a healthy customer relationship, but you've now transitioned into a point to where you feel guilty, then that's a point where you need to seriously consider the value of that long-term client. And the last one is one that I fall into. This is where I'm guilty. The trap of being too nice. Now, what I mean by that is I know what goes into marketing and advertising. I know there are certain things that just have to be improved in order for a customer to have the opportunity to be successful. For example, maybe cleaning up a logo. You know, there are times where I'll see a logo and I'll go, man, if they just turned this or did that, it could make a big difference to their overall branding. So sometimes when I've jumped into a meeting, I would say, hey, would you mind if I adjusted your logo a little bit? And if you're not going to be too picky about it, then I can knock it out for you. And I think it's really going to help you out. Now, A lot of times that works just fine. But periodically, the customer seems to have forgotten that the idea is that they're not too picky. And so what they'll do is then I get kind of brought into it and then they start making micro changes, then micro changes on top of micro changes. And this process becomes very time consuming in certain instances. And so by trying to be helpful, by understanding that they need something that they don't see value in is one of those things that for me personally, that's very challenging because I do know where some of those holes are in what we need to do because, you know, I've been around a while and I understand everything, you know, from the design aspect to the call to actions to marketing processes and how that stuff works and unifies together. This is also why I'm adamantly opposed to using different people for different items within a marketing program if they're not unified, different contractors, for example. Okay. So let's talk about the ROI of letting go. Just think of the time and emotional energy that you're going to recover. Now think about this, you know, if you just close your eyes for a second and you think about the customer that's really stressing you out right now. You know that one where you go home at dinner and you can't really pay attention to your spouse or listen to your kids because the activities of the day are worrying on your mind. You know that one where you're waking up in the morning and wondering whether or not you've done what they need to do or you're worried before you even get into the office if there's a ton of voicemails or phone calls or something like that leading to more problems. Now, again, I do want to emphasize that when we're talking about this, there are some times where you need to make things right. And there will be times where that needs to happen. And that's not this case. This is the case of the people that are habitually doing the things we're talking about. But I'm talking about the peace of mind you're going to have by letting go of those who you can never seem to make happy, that always consume more resources. Now, if you process that and you step back, now imagine what your life would be like by not having to work with those people. Your business is going to be better. You're going to have more peace of mind at night. You're going to have better family relationships. Everything's going to be better overall. And the people that are on your team are going to be more happy to come into work. Now, the next thing it's going to do is give you some space, some bandwidth, in order to bring on better fit clients. Now, the idea is that, we've already touched on this a little bit, is the idea that if 20% of people are causing 80% of your problems, and maybe problems isn't the right word, maybe it's overhead. Yeah, I kind of like that a little better come to think of it. Let's think of it like that. 20% of your people are causing 80% of your overhead. Now, if that's the case, then think about the amount of overhead you're going to reduce by letting those clients go. Now, I get it. You're worried about the money and the revenue and all these other things. But the idea is business is not about easy decisions. Sometimes business is tough decisions. And these tough decisions of recovering time that is being lost, supporting people, and dragging your business down is something that you probably want to consider really close and then understand. Are you good enough? I remember I talked to one guy one time, and he had a good business. And he was a good businessman. And one of the things he said to me that stuck out was he goes, well, if we're not competitive, if we don't offer something that no one needs, we don't deserve to be in business to begin with. And that made me think, now there was a lot of things I didn't like about this guy, but that was pretty powerful. I mean, think about it. If you're not competitive and you can't bring people in, if something's wrong with your business to such an extent that you can't do that, then maybe you don't deserve to be in business. You see, there's a liberation to that, isn't there? I mean, it's kind of scary when you think of it, but there's also a liberation. Are you good enough? Are you selling in the right way? Are you doing things that make your business more productive? And that's what it's all about. And so by optimizing your resources, it's like cutting down on lost material. And that's essentially what you're doing here. Now, in the end, keep in mind, it really boils down to this. Firing one bad client. often opens the door to two good ones. Now think about that. Think about your best client that you've got and think about the bad client that you got and think, okay, I'm going to have to make the tough decision and then what I'm going to have to do is look forward to having a Better clients take the place that'll generate twice the revenue. And if you include the overhead, my guess is if you do the math on it, when you bring everything in, you're probably working less than minimum wage on some of these particular clients. So how do we proceed with this? Well, the first thing is create a checklist. Is this worth continuing? Should you continue to work with this particular person? Now, I know on one side of that is going to be how much money they pay you. And probably on the other side, you're going to have a long list of every reason you should let go of them. Now, for me, that's my situation. And so the idea was making some tough decisions. I mean, we had some very, very affluent customers over the years that because we helped them grow, we were making a very healthy return on investment financially. But the stress, the thought that some of these people felt that they owned our company because of what they paid us was really, really tough for us. And so you need to create a checklist. Now, philosophically, I do want to put a pin right here just for a second. And let's talk about the quality of life. Now, this is tough because there is a money. And, you know, my sister once told me, she says, yeah, but you can't enjoy life if you don't have money. The more money you have, the more you can enjoy in life. But there are these other movies, you know, that come into play. Like, I think it was a movie, Happy. And what they showed at the time was that people who made$50,000 a year kind of hit that peak point of happiness. And once they exceeded$50,000 a year, It was no longer exponential. So when it went from 50 to 100,000 or 100 to 150 or 150 to a million or whatever, the degree of happiness that they generated from that additional money was not exponential. So it was much more slight with the more money that you make. And so when you're thinking about your checklist, I really encourage you to think about things like family. Like for me, one of the biggest things in my life right now, I'm 52, I'm going to be 53. When you think about, or when I think about life, I think about my kids and my grandkids. I think about the holidays. I think about the monthly gatherings that we have. And the value of family and grandkids and babies and all that is so much more than I think we realize when we're younger. And so when you create your checklist and you're thinking about it, think about the distractions. Think about the pain points. Think about how they're pulling you away from the things in life that ultimately really do matter. And some of that is the people that you work with. You want to think about the people you work with. You want to care about them. Now, not to a fault, not to where you take their side over any client, but you do want to take it to the point where you do try to give them a better quality of life too. Now, the next step is once you make your checklist and you determine whether or not that person's worth keeping, you're going to have to create a respectful exit strategy. Now, this can be tough, right? I mean, how do you essentially if it's a long term customer, it's almost like going through a divorce, you know, saying, hey, no offense, but I don't want to be married to you no more. No offense, but you're 80% of the problems of my business. That never goes over well when you use it in that context. For us, it's a very simple process. For us, it's honesty. One of the things we do is we look at the amount of hours. We track our hours from beginning to end on everything that we do. And if it turns out that we're making below a certain threshold, we're not a good fit for that particular client. They need more hands-on, and we simply can't offer them that degree of service. We're very personalized where we are. We don't work by customer numbers, and we try to understand each business for what they are. And if they consume that much overhead, then in reality they just won't fit with us, and that's one of the numbers that we can typically use is hey, you know, we've been looking at a few things. I need to talk to you about it. And this is not an easy conversation. But what we're saying is that when we're tracking our hours, that your project is consuming a lot more hours than what we can give you. And because of that, I'm not so sure we're a good fit for you. And I really want to help you Be able to meet the needs that you're trying to have to where it makes a better experience for you. And unfortunately, we're just not that fit. Now, sometimes that honesty thing really, really works well rather than just saying you're horrible. I've even had a few situations. It was like this. It was I remember this guy. This is a friend of mine forever ago. And one of the things he said when he was dealing with a negative customer, it was like, how can I help you leave me? That was kind of how he looked at it. And one of the things that he did was he even looked at refunding their last bit of money, even if they got a great product and everything. He would refund it because he would say, look, I want to let them leave happy and I want them to leave feeling good, but I can't afford to keep them on. And so, you know, that's a little more drastic. But to him, I mean, he looked at the numbers and he said it was much better to let the customer leave happy where they wouldn't have anything negative to say about the business. And at the same time, get a little something to boot for it. And in the end, he would acquire more customers and those customers would be more valuable to him and it worked very well for him. So the last thing is, and this is where we've really evolved as our company, and that is build a qualification system to prevent these kind of situations, not just up front, but also throughout the entire process. Now, what I mean by that is obviously we've covered some of them where you know the flags. I mean, in your business, you're going to know, wow, this person's probably not going to be the best. Like for us, for example, we look at the attitude of the client. We look if they stand us up in a meeting. We look at the idea of what is their attitude. Are they people that you can work with, or are they people that kind of have like this– belief that somehow you should serve them in some kind of unrealistic fashion. Now, we look for those things a lot. We also look hagglers. You know, hagglers are never a good sign because they'll always be hagglers. And we also look for people that can handle and be receptive and want to work with us. And so these are things that we do on our end in order to make sure, because frankly, I know something. If the business will engage with us and offer their experience in conjunction with what we offer, they're more successful. If they just expect us to magically have the buttons to push to make something work, they're not going to be as successful. So the other thing that we've done on our end was build systems. And a couple things I've done, matter of fact, is one, spend a lot of times making granular proposals and really kind of shutting the door on interpretation. For example, with us, we would have a, if we did logos, which we do logos quite a bit, when we do a logo design, we'll involve the client throughout the entire process, but we also have a point to where we'll provide three main layouts and then we'll offer subsequent revisions. And sometimes those revisions are based upon one of those layouts. And then we prevent the breadcrumb by limiting the number of revisions. For example, if someone were to come to us and they say, well, we want to change this shape to that shape and this color to that color, then the first thing that we'll try to do is say, okay, is this it? Because this is one of the two revisions that you have and we want to make sure that you have everything done to maximize your opportunity to get exactly what you want. Rather than making those changes and then allowing a breadcrumb style process to happen with that. That makes the customer happy and it also optimizes our processes. So everyone from accounting to project management to the designer, They all kind of understand where the project is at and also can serve the client better by letting them know exactly where those boundaries are for their project. So clear, granular beginning and ends on everything is really, really important. And sometimes the 20% become that 10% because they simply didn't understand where those boundaries were at. And so really that's on you, not on them. And I can tell you that that's been the case with our business, especially early on where we didn't set up those granular doors on what we should do and what we should not do. So in essence, look for flags in the very beginning and you know the flags. Step number two, make sure you build systems that can make your client successful. This is critical. And then once you build the systems that can help your client be successful and understand the boundaries, then the 20 would become 10. And in all honesty, we've been able to just have honest conversations before letting a client go and even doing things like this, where we go, hey, we've looked at the number of hours. We've looked at what we're doing here. And We can't keep going down this path. Now, here's our recommendation to get it cleared up. And for us, it's not a matter of us not liking you, because honestly, even the really problematic customers we've had over the years, even that guy we had to let go in the first episode, I like them personally. Personally, they were all right. And so sometimes just sitting down and equating it to their business or saying, look, here's the reality. And I still like to work with you, but we've got to be able to reel this in a little bit. And believe it or not, that works really, really good in a lot of cases where you simply are honest and truthful and you speak the reality to it. And that can be done in a very respectful way. And a lot of times it can completely salvage the part of that 20%. Now let's take some inventory. What's our actionable items? We have a lot of actionable items we need to put into place in order to make this happen. So you may want to break out your pencil and paper, of course. First one is, if you wouldn't take the client on again today, why are you still serving them? If they're not a good fit today, why are you still serving some of those legacy clients? Now, the other thing you're going to want to do is clean up your systems and your processes. This is huge. Make sure that you don't have anything in your proposals, quotes, or offerings that offer any kind of room for interpretation. This way, it gives a very clear boundary for both you, your team, and your customers. So you can refer back to it. Now you're not the bad guy trying to shut the door on something that you've done. Now you're just trying to fulfill the agreed upon terms of a proposal. Now, historically, this is why contracts were made. Contracts were made not to manipulate people or abuse people or contort them or force them into some type of enslavement. What it really was intended to do was offer clear communications between two parties. Now, unfortunately, that's not the case anymore. In a lot of cases, legal warfare is kind of put out there to minimize your ability to maneuver. which has been horrible. But keep in mind that if you're going to operate on the up and up, your goal is to offer clear communications. That's our whole goal, is to be able to make sure that the customer understands their perspective and yours. So read your proposals and go, okay, if I was a customer, could I interpret this to where I can do X, Y, or Z? And when you do it, you're going to see a lot of holes more than likely, and you want to close them up. Now, this is going to take time. I mean, I spent a lot of time just over the holidays last year reworking a lot of our proposals and putting some limits where there was ambiguity prior to. Even places where I didn't see any potential issues, I could see future potential issues by leaving things vague. Now, I know why we do the vague stuff, right? Because to spell it out, It takes a lot of time, and it takes a lot of factors to go into it, ranging down from, well, how do you put the boundaries on it? And then number two, how do you charge based upon the boundaries and include all the overhead that you have in your business and everything that goes into it? And those are challenging things to do. They're time-consuming things to do. But in the end, you're setting the pieces up to where everything is going to work a lot better. Then the next thing I would suggest is once you've set that inventory and you've done it and you've kind of built your checklist and you kind of look at everything, then the next thing to do is to start making some decisions. Are you going to be willing to deal with the stress of the 20%? Is it worth it to you? If you have a lot of overhead, your overhead may not be due to anything other than the culture of your business. It may have nothing to do with how much you pay people. A lot of people think that those things go into it. But if people are unsure, see, here's the thing, and maybe this will help, is when you think of people, think of the thing that you're worried about right now. The thing you're worried about right now is the unknown of the future. Security and stability is what people want. They want to feel like they're heard, they're important, and have security and stability, and that what they do matters. Now, your team needs to feel that. In my opinion, I really try to embrace that because I've been through so much in my life that I really want to give that to people on my team. Now, not to the detriment of the customer. But here's the idea. If you're allowing your customers to abuse your employees, what you're saying is that that creates this unknown. That creates this, well, what's going to happen tomorrow or what's going to happen here? And so to be able to offer systems that are locked in and solid will also eliminate problems. frustration, controversy. It'll minimize so many of these factors that go into it. Now, of course, you got to look at your team too. And at Integris, we're incredibly blessed. I mean, the people that are on our team I've known forever, on our team that I've known forever. And we're a family business. I never thought I'd be a family business. I used to I used to tell people, one thing you don't want to be is a family business because you can't make objective decisions. And here we are as a family business, you know, 20 years later, and it's working out really well. So anyway, all food for thought. I think if you take all these things into heart, and if you were to let go of your 20%, which is scary, I get it. But if you let go of the 20%, You're going to feel a lot better. You're not going to feel drugged down. You're not going to feel you're being questioned on everything. You're not going to question your own sanity at a certain point. And you're going to be able to move forward. You're going to create more stability for the clients that you do want to keep and that are good. And you're also going to be able to make your team happier. And you're going to have your workflow that works a lot better. A lot of work that goes into it. But you can do this. You can do this. And I understand sometimes there is gray. It's not always black and white. You got to make some of those gray decisions. But putting some of this into practice is going to help you understand where your grays are versus your black and whites, what you should do, who you should keep, who you should start thinking about letting go so that your business can grow essentially without adding one more piece of inventory, one more person, one more service, one more subscription. And you freed your bandwidth to grow. Now, what could be better than that? Until next time, I'm Kent Carroll, and this is Over the Bull, brought to you by Integris Design.

SPEAKER_00: 43:59

Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bull, brought to you by Integris Design, a full-service design and marketing agency out of Asheville, North Carolina. Until next time.